e-flux Journal #150
<p>Art has always had a strange relation to power, whether in the service of royals and merchants or as a form for revolutionary vanguards’ imagination. Today the relationship has become even more complex, especially as the structures that have underwritten contemporary art shift beneath our feet—open markets close, soft power hardens into war, and populist sentiment becomes public life. One can say that, on a very high level, power itself has become highly unstable. In this special issue of e-flux journal, guest editor Mi You proposes that this instability is accompanied by a malleability, but also by a problem of representation that demands the immediacy of realism: a transfer of hopes and expectations to a calculus of means and ends. What would it mean to tactically revisit sites of oppression like capital and the state, but as fluid bodies that might be repurposed as levers? If art still corresponds to social progress, do notions like freedom and equality need new vision or should we rather prepare for what follows their ruin?</p> <p><strong>Editorial: “Experimental Publics”<br /> </strong> Mi You</p> <p><strong>Art in a Multipolar World: Problem Analysis and Horizons<br /> </strong> Mi You</p> <p><strong>The Art of Diplomacy: Alexandre Kojève’s Guide for the Perplexed<br /> </strong> Danilo Scholz</p> <p><strong>The State of Chinese Science<br /> </strong> Jacob Dreyer</p> <p><strong>Ludic War Machines<br /> </strong> Max Grünberg</p> <p><strong>Imperial Politics and Dominant Ideologies: The Origin, Development, and Future of Nationalist Movements<br /> </strong>Dingxin Zhao</p> <p><strong>Play to Heal: On Resourcing Sustainable Activism in the Arts<br /> </strong> Yin Aiwen with Yiren Zhao</p> <p><strong>Living in the Valley of Underdetermination<br /> </strong>Aslak Aamot Helm</p>
Guest Editor: Mi You
Contributors: Mi You, Danilo Scholz, Jacob Dreyer, Max Grünberg, Dingxin Zhao, Yin Aiwen, Yiren Zhao, Aslak Aamot Helm
Editors: Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle
Managing Editor: Minh Nguyen
Copy Editor: Michael Andrews
Associate Editor: Andreas Petrossiants
Art Director: Peter Sit
Contributing Editor: Serubiri Moses, Elvia Wilk, Evan Calder Williams
Poetry Editor: Simone White
Graphic Designer: Jeff Ramsey
PDF Designer: Mengyi Qian
Programmer: Adam Florin, Keyian Vafai
Part of: e-flux journal
ISSN: 21641625